1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a sealed structure which can protect an apparatus from impurities from the outside of the device and to a method of manufacturing a light-emitting device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Glass frit sealing is known as a technique of hermetically sealing a space formed by two bonded glass substrates. It is known that a sealed structure using glass frit sealing achieves excellent hermeticity, and such a sealed structure has been applied to electroluminescent (hereinafter abbreviated as EL) display devices, liquid crystal display devices, plasma display devices, and the like.
Attempts have been made to apply glass frit sealing particularly to EL display devices, expecting reliability improvement of EL elements. In organic EL elements, an organic EL layer or electrodes between which the organic EL layer is provided may rapidly decrease in reliability when exposed to moisture or oxygen. As a sealing technique using glass frit for preventing exposure of an organic EL layer and electrodes to the air, for example, the technique described in Patent Document 1 is known.
According to the technique described in Patent Document 1, glass frit paste discharged from a nozzle is applied along the edge of a glass substrate to form a partition, and the partition made of the glass frit paste is baked to form a glass frit layer. The glass frit layer is pressed to another glass substrate, heated and melted by being irradiated with laser light, and welded to the other glass substrate. Thus, a sealed structure with excellent hermeticity is formed.